Syria's once vibrant Jewish community goes back thousands of years.

Biblical Origins

Residents of Aleppo, the northern Syrian city that for millennia was home to a vibrant Jewish community, trace their city’s origin to the Jewish patriarch Abraham. Accompanying his flock of sheep through the area, Abraham is thought to have distributed sheep’s milk to local residents.

The Hebrew word for milk, halev, became the name of the town. (Aleppo is known as Haleb in both Arabic and Hebrew.)

Syria in the Torah

Syria was an important trading partner with Israel in ancient times. Damascus, the present-day capital, was an oasis resting point on trade routes from Mesopotamia to Israel. Jews were present in Syria as far back as the time of King David, who conquered Damascus and briefly appointed governors over the city (II Samuel 8:5-6).

During the reign of the Jewish King Ahab, a local king from Syria named Ben-Hadad waged war against the Kingdom of Judah. God aided King Ahab and his Jewish army, who prevailed, after which Ben-Hadad relinquished his hold on Jewish cities and allowed Jews to trade in Damascus: “The cities that my father took from your father, I shall return; and you may control markets in Damascus, just as my father did in Samaria” (I Kings 20:34).

Jewish Life

Located adjacent to the ancient Kingdom of Israel, Jews lived in Syria since ancient times. One notable Jewish resident was Judah haNasi, famous for the redaction of the Mishna, who owned land near present-day Damascus. The Mishna mentions many Syrian cities that were home to Jews in ancient times, including Kefar Karinos, Rom, Aratris, and Beth-Anath.

Maimonides, the great Medieval rabbi, cited the Jewish community of Aleppo as one of the most spiritual and dynamic Jewish communities outside of the land of Israel: “In all the Holy Land and in Syria, there is one city alone and it is Halab (Aleppo) in which there are those who are truly devoted to the Jewish religion and the study of Torah.” (Igros U’Teshuvos Rambam, Epstein Publishing, Jerusalem, 5714 pg. 69.) Rambam’s monumental philosophical work, Guide for the Perplexed, was written in the form of a letter to a Syrian rabbi, Joseph ben Judah ibn Shimon.

Spanish Inquisition

When King Ferdinand of Spain expelled his country’s thousand-year-old Jewish community, Sultan Beyazid II, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, sent his navy ships to bring Jews to Ottoman lands. “Can you call such a king wise and intelligent?” he asked of King Ferdinand. “He is impoverishing his country and enriching my kingdom!”

Spanish Jews poured into the ancient Jewish communities of Syria. For some generations, these new arrivals kept a distinct culture, speaking Ladino instead of the local Arabic. By the mid-1700s, the Spanish Jews had blended with the other Jewish communities in Syria.

The Famous Aleppo Codex

In the early Middle Ages, a Jewish scribe named Ben-Asher laboriously hand-copied the Torah and other manuscripts onto parchment, then stitched them together to make a codex, an early form of book. Unlike Torah scrolls, this Codex contained punctuation, vowels and musical notes, making it especially valuable to scholars seeking to understand key Jewish texts.

When Crusaders sacked Jerusalem 1099, they murdered the city’s inhabitants – one Christian knight recorded the scene near the Western Wall “where there was such a massacre that our men were wading up to their ankles in enemy blood” – and sacked the city. One treasure taken away for ransom (along with Jewish leaders) was the Codex.

The Codex was eventually bought back from the Crusaders by Jews; in 1375, it was brought to Aleppo, one of the great centers of Jewish Torah study, and housed in Aleppo’s magnificent Grand Synagogue. There, the Codex acquired an almost mystical importance. People would travel to pray near it, and it was said that if the Codex ever left Aleppo, the Jewish community there would cease to exist.

Five hundred years later that prophecy started to become true. In 1947, when the UN voted to create a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, Arab rioters, egged on by government officials, attacked Aleppo’s Jewish community, killing scores of Jews and burning many buildings, including the Great Synagogue. The Codex vanished. It was smuggled out of Syria and brought to Israel. It reappeared in 1958 in Jerusalem, but with nearly 200 pages missing. It’s thought that some of these pages are in the hands of Syrian Jews who regard them as holy objects; some might have been sold on the black market. The remaining Aleppo Codex today is housed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Damascus Blood Libel

Long a fixture in Europe, the infamous blood libel (the lie that Jews kill Christians and use their blood to bake matzah) spread to a land outside of Europe for the first time in 1840, when a Franciscan friar and his servant disappeared in Damascus.

Local Syrian officials, ruled at the time by French colonial authorities, arrested and tortured several prominent Jews, who later tried by the French consul. Two Jews died in prison; one agreed to convert to Islam to save his life. American President Martin Van Buren was so horrified by this use of torture, his Secretary of State noted “he cannot refrain from expressing surprise and pain that in this advanced age such barbarous measures be resorted to in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt.”

Rising Anti-Semitism

In December 1947, when the UN voted to partition Palestine into two nations and establish a Jewish state for the first time in two thousand years, the Muslim residents of Aleppo turned on their Jewish neighbors in a frenzy of killing. Urged on by government officials, rioters killed dozens of Jews and burned many buildings, including Aleppo’s famed Great Synagogue.

Author Matti Friedman interviewed a survivor of the pogrom: “Howls of rage came from (the rioters) outside. The Jews in Palestine, someone screamed, were cutting Muslim babies from their mothers’ wombs. His parents barricaded the family in the main room of the house…. Then the rioters were at the door, and the boy escaped barefoot through a window… When they had taken his family’s valuables, they used the kerosene and coal his parents had been storing for winter to set the building alight” (from The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman, Algonquin Books, 2012).

Anti-Semitism continued to intensify, and Syria’s Jews began to flee, mainly to Israel and the United States. Home to 40,000 Jews in 1947, only a few thousand Jews remained in the country by 1967.

Our Man in Damascus

In the 1960s one of the most dapper men about town in Damascus was Kamal Amin Ta’abet, a Syrian who’d lived in Argentina and cultivated connections and friends at the highest levels of Syria’s new Ba’athist Government.

In reality, Kamal was Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy, whose wife Nadia was waiting at home for him in Israel. He was born in Egypt to Syrian Jewish parents, then moved to Israel as a child. He volunteered to deep undercover in Syria, despite the incredible dangers.

Eli Cohen at the Golan Heights with Syrian military personnel

One of the greatest threats to Israel at the time was Syria’s determination to divert water from the Jordan River, depriving Israel of one of its major sources of water. Syrian troops also used the high mountains of the Golan to fire into Israeli towns and farms. Eli Cohen provided Israel with major intelligence on both issues. After using his contacts to procure a tour of the Golan Heights, Eli suggested that Syrian troops plant trees at their military bases to provide shade and cover; Israel was later able to pinpoint the exact location of military bases from the location of these trees.

In 1965, Eli Cohen was caught sending a secret radio message to Israel. He was arrested, tortured, and publicly executed. Syria continues to refuse to hand over his body, though in late 2016, video of his execution was released for the first time, posted on a Facebook page titled “Syrian Art Treasures”.

Syrian-American Jews Rescuing their Brethren

In 1989, with thousands of Syrian Jews trapped in Syria and facing brutal anti-Semitism, a group of Syrian-American Jews formed the Council for the Rescue of Syrian Jews, headed by New York lawyer Alice Harary Sardell. Between 1989 and 1995, the Council intensively lobbied American and foreign politicians and diplomats, and spearheaded work to get news of the plight of Syrian Jews to a broader audience. “We needed to elevate the plight of Syrian Jews which was unknown to the world” explains Clement Soffer, a Vice President of the Council.

The Council took out full page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post asking Syria to “LET MY PEOPLE GO”. They feverishly granted interview on radio and television. They helped organize simultaneously demonstrations in London, Paris, Rome and Sydney, demanding that Jews in Syria be allowed to leave.

Finally, on April 27, 1992, Syria announced that it was dropping travel restrictions on Jews who wished to leave. Syrian-Brazilian Jewish banker Edmond Safra paid $3 million for airline tickets for 4,500 Syrian Jews, and a number of Jewish agencies, including the Council for the Rescue of Syrian Jews, helped arrange and finance their settlement in Brooklyn, New York. “If they had remained in Syria,” Clement Soffer explains, “they would surely have been slaughtered.”

Canadian Grandma Who Rescued Syrian Jews

Judy Feld Carr was an ordinary Ashkenazi Jewish musician living in Toronto with her husband when she first learned about the intense anti-Semitism Syrian Jews faced, and the difficulty the Jewish community had in escaping once the highly anti-Zionist Baath Party came to power in 1963. At the time few people were focused on helping Syrian Jews; most institutional attention was directed to the much larger Soviet Jewish community instead.

Even though Judy was not Syrian, and was not living in New York where the Council for the Rescue of Syrian Jews was active, Judy and her husband Ronald got in touch with a synagogue in Damascus, and started sending religious items to help the Jewish community there. In 1975, a friend of Judy’s went back to Aleppo visit her brother there. The friend was briefly imprisoned back in Syria, and eventually returned to Toronto with a letter from the Jewish community that she managed to smuggle out. “It’s a letter that you only see during the times of the Holocaust,”

Judy Feld Carr explained. “It was a letter written by three rabbis in Aleppo, saying something to the effect that: ‘Our children are your children. Get us out of here!’”

Judy started fundraising at her Toronto synagogue and in the Jewish community, and managed to raise money to bribe officials to smuggle a Jew out of Syria. He’d been imprisoned and tortured back in Syria after his children had tried to flee the country. Suffering from cancer, he entered Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He had only one further request, he told Judy: he wanted to see his elderly, ill mother, who was living in Israel. “Then,” he explained, “I can die in Israel.” Judy brought him to Israel. The day before he died, Judy visited him. He begged her to smuggle out one of his daughters. Honoring the wish of a dying man, Judy promised, and smuggled out the 19 year old, who went on to marry and build a family in Israel.

“That was the beginning of the ransoming,” Judy Feld Carr later explained. One by one, financed by the Dr. Ronald Feld Fund for Jews in Arab Lands at Toronto’s Beth Tzedek Synagogue, Judy arranged to smuggle out “exactly 3,228 Jews – one at a time” over the next 28 years.

“Let’s face it,” Judy told The Times of Israel in 2012, “I’m a mommy who lives in Toronto. I’m not an expert in foreign intrigue…. It doesn’t blend at all with what my former profession was and being a mother of six kids”. Judy never visited Syria, and for years toiled in secret, in incredible danger, as her identity became known to Syrian security forces. Only in the 1990s was her work recognized.

In 1995, Israel’s then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wrote to the Toronto grandmother: “Words cannot express my gratitude to you for 23 years of hard and dangerous work. Very few people, if any, have contributed as greatly as you have. The Jews of Syria who were rescued and the State of Israel owe you so much, and will never be able to reward you as you deserve.”

Helping Syrian Refugees Today

Since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2013, over 2,000 Syrians have been smuggled into Israel to receive life-saving medical treatment. The Ziv Medical Center in Safed has treated over 800 wounded Syrians, making it one of the largest treatment centers for Syrians anywhere. Syria remains formally at war with Israel and refuses to recognize the Jewish state. When Syrians who were treated in Israel return to Syria, they cannot tell people where they’ve been; Israeli medical personnel remove all Hebrew writing from medication and equipment to protect their Syrian patients.

Israelis are helping Syrians in other ways too.

Israeli businessman Moti Kahana has spent over $2.2 million of his own money to send humanitarian aid to southern Syria. He founded Amaliah, meaning “work of God” in Hebrew, which helps coordinate Israeli volunteers and the Israeli army as they send food, medicine, drinking water and educational materials to Syria. Amaliah also helps bring Syrians to Israeli hospitals and organizes empowerment workshops for Syrian women. In September 2016, when the UN found it too dangerous to bring emergency aid into Syria during the Muslim festival of Eid, Amaliah worked with the Israeli Defense Forces to transport a ton of meat into the country.

Another Israeli organization, “Operation Blossom of Hope” uses crowdsourcing to raise money to help Syrian refugees stranded in Europe. Founded by Israeli humanitarian worker Shachar Zahavi, Operation Blossom of Hope set up fifty drop-off sites around Israel, raising over one and a half ton of donated winter supplies for the refugees including coats, sweaters, boots, warm socks, blankets and sleeping bags.

Israeli humanitarian organization Israel Flying Aid (IFA) has been operating in Syria since 2011, training and equipping nearly 2,000 of the famed “White Helmets”: volunteers who conduct search and rescue missions amid rubble from Syria’s lethal war. IFA also has trained 22 doctors and many medical technicians. For years, IFA volunteers worked in Syria without revealing their Israeli identity. When her colleagues first learned she is Israeli, recalls Gal Lusky, IFA’s founder and CEO, one of her Syrian colleagues stood up and declared “Now I understand. You are not even my friend. You are my enemy. After Assad, we are coming for you next.” Despite such sentiments, Israeli IFA volunteers continue to provide vital, life-saving aid to Syrians.

About the Author

Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world.

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 4

(3)
Deborah,
July 30, 2017 9:54 AM

Incredible History

Glad to see Israel is helping Syrians today. Perhaps this can help change the regrettable culture of anti-Semitism in Syria, despite its rich Jewish history. A great article, well-researched as usual.

(2)
Daniel,
March 22, 2017 7:55 PM

Why are we helping the Syrians

If the Syrians hate Israel & the Jews after their treatment just like before, and will continue to hate us, why should we help them at the expense of helping ourselves first?

I understand being merciful, but this is mercy to the cruel. It's like a rescue operation for poisonous snakes - who will strike back at a helper no differently than an enemy.

Patrick,
March 30, 2017 11:43 AM

Do GOOD to change the BAD we see

(1)
Raphaelle Do Lern Hwei,
March 22, 2017 9:47 AM

Ahab's politics

Thank you for mentioning Kig Ahab (whose wife Jezebel, probably from Syria, opposed Israel's local prophets, in order to take over the country). It turned out NOT to be a fair deal later. We have to learn from history sometimes.

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This year during Chanukah I will be on a wilderness survival trip, and it will be very difficult to properly celebrate the holiday. I certainty won't be able to bring along a Menorah.

So if I am going to celebrate only one day of Chanukah, which is the most significant?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

If a person can only celebrate one day of Chanukah, he should celebrate the first day.

This is similar to a case where a person is in prison, and the authorities agree to permit him to go to synagogue one day. The law is that he should go at the first opportunity, and not wait for a more important day like the High Holidays.

The reason is because one should not allow the opportunity of a mitzvah to pass. Moreover, it is quite conceivable that circumstances will later change and allow for additional observance. Therefore, we do not let the first chance pass. (Sources: Code of Jewish Law OC 90, Mishnah Berurah 28.)

As an important aside, Chanukah candles must be lit in (or at the entrance to) a home rather than out of doors. Thus, you should not light in actual "wilderness," but only after you've pitched your tent for the night.

There may be another reason why the first night is the one to focus on. Chanukah is celebrated for eight days to commemorate the one-day supply of oil that miraculously burned for eight days. But if you think about it, since there was enough oil to burn naturally for one night, nothing miraculous happened on that first night! So why shouldn't Chanukah be just seven days?!

There are many wonderful answers given to this question, highlighting the special aspect of the first day. Here are a few:

1) True, the miracle of the oil did not begin until the second day, and lasted for only seven days. But the Sages designated the first day of Chanukah in commemoration of the miraculous military victory.

2) Having returned to the Temple and found it in shambles, the Jews had no logical reason to think they would find any pure oil. The fact that the Maccabees didn't give up hope, and then actually found any pure oil at all, is in itself a miracle.

3) The Sages chose Chanukah, a festival that revolves around oil's ability to burn, as the time to teach the fundamental truth that even so-called "natural" events take place only because God wants them to.

The Talmudic Sage Rabbi Chanina Ben Dosa expressed this truth in explaining a miracle that occurred in his own home. Once, his daughter realized that she had lit the Shabbos candles with vinegar instead of oil. Rabbi Chanina calmed her, saying, "Why are you concerned! The One Who commanded oil to burn, can also command vinegar to burn!" The Talmud goes on to say that those Shabbos lights burned bright for many hours (Taanit 25a).

To drive this truth home, the Sages decreed that Chanukah be observed for eight days: The last seven to commemorate the miracle of the Menorah, and the first to remind us that even the “normal” burning of oil is only in obedience to God's wish.

In closing, I'm not sure what's stopping you from celebrating more than one day? At a minimum, you can light one candle sometime during the evening, and that fulfills the mitzvah of Chanukah - no “official Menorah” necessary. With so much joy to be had, why limit yourself to one night only?!

In 165 BCE, the Maccabees defeated the Greek army and rededicated the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Finding only one jar of pure oil, they lit the Menorah, which miraculously burned for eight days. Also on this day -- 1,100 years earlier -- Moses and the Jewish people completed construction of the Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary that accompanied them during 40 years of wandering in the desert. The Tabernacle was not dedicated, however, for another three months; tradition says that the day of Kislev 25 was then "compensated" centuries later -- when the miracle of Chanukah occurred and the Temple was rededicated. Today, Jews around the world light a Chanukah menorah, to commemorate the miracle of the oil, and its message that continues to illuminate our lives today.

A person who utilizes suffering to arouse himself in spiritual matters will find consolation. He will recognize that even though the suffering was difficult for him, it nevertheless helped him for eternity.

When you see yourself growing spiritually through your suffering, you will even be able to feel joy because of that suffering.

They established these eight days of Chanukah to give thanks and praise to Your great Name(Siddur).

Jewish history is replete with miracles that transcend the miracle of the Menorah. Why is the latter so prominently celebrated while the others are relegated to relative obscurity?

Perhaps the reason is that most other miracles were Divinely initiated; i.e. God intervened to suspend the laws of nature in order to save His people from calamity.

The miracle of the Menorah was something different. Having defeated the Seleucid Greek invaders, the triumphant Jews entered the Sanctuary. There they found that they could light the Menorah for only one day, due to a lack of undefiled oil. Further, they had no chance of replenishing the supply for eight days. They did light the Menorah anyway, reasoning that it was best to do what was within their ability to do and to postpone worrying about the next day until such worry was appropriate. This decision elicited a Divine response and the Menorah stayed lit for that day and for seven more.

This miracle was thus initiated by the Jews themselves, and the incident was set down as a teaching for all future generations: concentrate your efforts on what you can do, and do it! Leave the rest to God.

While even our best and most sincere efforts do not necessarily bring about miracles, the teaching is nevertheless valid. Even the likelihood of failure in the future should not discourage us from any constructive action that we can take now.

Today I shall...

focus my attention on what it is that I can do now, and do it to the best of my ability.

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